#19 – Jesper Ratzer: 6x World Racketlon Champion

If you haven’t heard of racketlon before you need to check it out. It’s an incredible sport that combines table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis to determine who is the best all round racket sports player. The sport is relatively new but is growing in popularity in Europe and already has world rankings and a world championships.

So, who is the best all round racket sports player in the world? Well, he’s Jesper Ratzer from Copenhagen in Denmark and he joins me on this episode of The Expert Table Tennis Podcast. Jesper was an accomplished badminton and tennis player as a child, but it was only when he first got involved in racketlon that he discovered the joys and struggles of table tennis. Since then he has been training hard to improve his game and play, as he says, “proper table tennis”.

Table tennis can be particularly tough for adult starters to get into. Most of the coaching in our sport is aimed at the junior players and seniors are pretty much expected to already be able to play before turning up to most clubs. This means that the majority of adult starters struggle to make any significant progress and find them developing a host of bad habits and tendencies that limit their game along the way.

From what I can tell, Jesper is the exception to the rule. Despite only getting involved in competitive table tennis at the age of 28 he has quickly improved and is now a very competent player in the Danish national league. I wanted to get him on the show to find out a little more about racketlon and also discover the secret of his table tennis success. This is a brilliant interview and certainly one not to be missed!

In this episode you’ll learn:

What racketlon actually is and how it works.

Jesper’s involvement in sport as a child.

How he first got involved in racketlon in 2010.

Jesper’s thoughts on risk vs safety in competitive matches.

How Jesper became world champion after just two years in the sport.

About his intensive table tennis training.

Some of his greatest struggles mastering the game of table tennis.

The strengths and weaknesses of his game.

Two of Jesper’s top tips for table tennis players.

How to follow Jesper’s racketlon and table tennis results on Facebook.

Links from this episode:

Thanks for listening!

Thank you so much for joining us. I really hope you enjoyed the show and learned a lot from listening to Jesper. It was great to hear all about his journey from recreational ping pong player to competitive table tennis champion. He has done a lot of training over the past five years to make that happen! It doesn’t happen overnight. You need to put in the work and get yourself in the correct training environment. Jesper has done everything right and got the results.

If you are interested in watching Jesper in action on the table tennis table then check out the video below. It is the table tennis match from the World Racketlon Championships in 2014.

That is the sort of level you can expect to be playing at after four years of hard work as an adult starter. I’m sure that Jesper would be the first to admit that he still has plenty of areas in his table tennis game that he needs to work on, but at the same time it’s really impressive to see someone playing such high-level “proper” table tennis after just four years of training and experience.

Please share the show

It was my goal to reach 5,000+ downloads of the podcast in the month of September. We didn’t quite make it but finished on a very respectable 4,710. I am sure that, with five new episodes being released in October, we are sure to smash through the 5,000 mark but in order for that to happen I really need your help.

Please, please, please (if you haven’t already) would you subscribe on iTunes and leave the show an honest iTunes Podcast review. Success on iTunes is key to the long-term popularity and success of the show.

I would also really appreciate it if you could continue sharing The Expert Table Tennis Podcast with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter using the links on this page. Every share puts the podcast in front of potential new listeners and fans.

I will have a brand new episode for you next Friday – Episode #20! I can’t believe we have done twenty of these already. I really enjoying interviewing these amazing guests and learning from their stories and experiences. As I said at the end of the episode, if there is anyone in particular that you would like to hear on the show then please drop me a message and let me know. I want to book on the guests that you want to hear from.

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